First, my apologies: I haven't blogged here for a while. Work has been busy and, well, I've spent far too much time blogging about Linux-related stuff on my personal blog.

But anyway.

Readers may recall that, back in February, I blogged about the changes to the General Conditions of Entitlement which were to take effect on 3rd April 2023.

This included the changes relating to Ofcom's desired new switching process, the "One Touch Switch".

The process is dependent on The One Touch Switching Company, which said that it was working on an API.

At the very end of March, TOTSCo said that it had selected a supplier for its hub, and was going to start negotiations with them.

That didn't give much time to get everything in place by a deadline which was beginning to look ever more impractical.

Indeed, at the end of the bulletin, TOTSCo said:

Currently we believe that the release of the Hub for industry to start their OTS testing will be within the August to October window that was previously announced. We anticipate that test harness availability and the start of user onboarding will both be in advance of this date.

Which is not 3rd April either.

And Ofcom has, perhaps not surprisingly, picked up on this:

We have been closely monitoring industry’s progress in implementing the changes, and have been putting pressure on providers to meet their requirements by today’s deadline. Unfortunately, the new process has not been introduced on time.

As a result, we have launched an industry-wide enforcement programme, following this failure to meet a regulatory deadline.

Quite what this will mean in practice, especially for smaller providers, I don't know. But some of you might be hearing from Ofcom soon, as to what you are doing about your compliance with the new rules.